A girl and her garden :)

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Monthly Archives: January 2016

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Had a wander up to the the tunnel this morning to check on the seedlings. Glad I did as some of them are showing signs of, well, death!

They have been in the tunnel now for 2 days and on the whole the majority of the seedlings are thriving in their new home. We have been blessed with periods of sun so they have relished the warmth and light the tunnel is providing them. That is, apart from the ASTER ‘Duchess Yellow’. I would say at least 30% of them are either dying back or in some cases, look like they have been food for someone!!

I’m gutted as these were a variety I wanted for my own garden. I have given them a light watering and will just have to keep a close eye on them for the next few days to see what happens. I have had a good look and I can’t see any ‘nasties’ lurking around, so hopefully no further damage will be done and they will start to pick up again.

On the plus side, the LARKSPUR ‘Giant Imperial Mixed’ are thriving! The growth on these in the last couple of days has been remarkable!!

The GYPSOPHILA ELEGANS ‘Covent Garden’ are recovering now from when they were transplanted are are finally standing tall.

The CANDYTUFT ‘Dwarf Fairyland Mix’ are also coming on in leaps and bounds.

On the whole, I am really pleased. I have some seedlings to bring back from Mums early next week which need a bit of TLC, but at the moment there is still plenty of room to grow more 🙂

I completely forgot to mention that just before I was hit with the stomach bug, I had placed my first plant order! Exciting!!

After going through my planting and sowing plan I realised that I would have a few occasions here and there, were I was going to be left with limited colour and height options so needed to order a few bits to plug the gaps.

The following plants have been ordered and are coming (next week!) in varying sizes from 5cm cells to first grade loose plants.

Waking up to a dry, sunny morning is always a pleasant surprise this time of year so once I had dropped Will off at school, there was some serious green-fingered activities to do.

As it was still a bit nippy outside, I started my morning by re-potting some GAILLARDIA ‘F1 Bi-colour’ and some BUDDLEJA ‘Mixed’.

Both varieties were in a bit of a state and needed a good tidy up. There was even a MUSCARI bulb growing in one of the pots!

After a quick tidy up, the plants looked fab so after giving them a good feed, they are now ready to go back outside.

Most of my ‘bits’ are still in the mancave as the polytunnel is still having some final ‘tweaks’ however, with is being so sunny, and knowing that the tunnel was going to be warm, my next couple of hours were spent in pure bliss setting things up in there.

The flooring is now down, the staging is more or less up and I have even got some of the plants out of the temporary greenhouse and mini grow-houses now inside and happily soaking up the sun and warmth.

And then, as the sun was still out (although, the breeze was picking up quite significantly by this point), I decided to do some digging 🙂

The area under the pylon still needs a lot of work, so I pretty much carried on from where I left off last time.

Unfortunately I only managed to work outside for a little over an hour before the rain started which was really frustrating as I was on a roll.

On the plus side, the area certainly looks flatter now and fingers crossed I have got rid of all the MUSCARI from this area!

Can I firstly apologise for my last 2 or 3 posts. I have been feeling down (stomach bug didn’t help) and after re-reading what I have posted over the last week, I realised just how miserable my posts have been. I guess the grey clouds had rolled in without me realising and although I was still able to do something I love, I just wasn’t enjoying it or quite myself.

But with the realisation that I need to pick myself back up – sometimes, that’s all it takes, I have made positive progress today at getting back on track.

I checked the plants that I wanted to re-pot this morning and unfortunately they are still that little bit too wet for me to work with, so I will do these tomorrow. I have Gaillardia, Buddleja and Hollyhocks to do and judging by the look of the Hollyhocks, the Nemesia “Poetry Mix” have decided to spread their wings and set up home as Squatters in the Hollyhock (Alcea Rose) pots – GRRR!

So, unable to do what I had originally planned, I decided to plant some more seeds. After being ill last week I am behind on this so need to catch up with myself.

Firstly, my second sowing of my ANTIRRHINUM’S ‘Liberty Classic‘ and ‘Tom Thumb‘. I still have thousands of these seeds and as they are such a popular variety for bedding plants, I thought it best to do a second sowing of each variety.

Even though they are not one of my favourite plants, they do always seem to sell well.

Next, a plant I am really fond of for adding “wow factor” to the front of beds; GAZANIA ‘Tiger Mix’.

I did two 40 cell trays of these and as I have plenty of seeds left over, I will do another sowing in the next 2 weeks. These seeds came from Mum and were from plants she had growing in her garden last year.

Lastly, were the SWEET PEA ‘Percy Thrower’ that H gave me. The packet said average contents of 20, but I was lucky enough to get 29 out of them. Due to their neutral colour, with just a hint of pink, I may keep these for myself and use them to collect more seeds for next year 🙂

Oh, and one more thing – BB HQ (polytunnel) now looks like this 🙂 🙂 🙂

Am hoping to get in there tomorrow and get everything sorted. We currently have rain and strong winds so am going to wait until things are a little calmer and hopefully give the battered garden a tidy up to. My compost bin has already moved 6 feet from where it was this morning!!!

It’s only when I started re-potting all of these plants, did I actually realise just how much I already have! I reckon it’s going to take me at least another 2 weeks to do them all!!

Anyways, onwards and upwards.

This morning’s sessions started with RUDBECKIA ‘Goldsturm’. Now I only have two of these and both looked in a sorry state. One even had a lodger!

On inspection, both plants looked in good health so they were re-potted and given a good feed.

Next, PHLOX ‘Peppermint Twist’. I will be honest, for some reason, I have never had much luck with growing any variety of PHLOX, but as these produce some beautiful, sweet-like blooms, I was keen to have another go with them.

All 3 plants already had new growth on (bit early!), but their root systems looked happy and healthy so again, re-potted and fed.

HEMEROCALLIS ‘Daring Deception’ next of which again, I have 3. I was stunned at the amount of growth on these plants. Normally, there is nothing at all until the very end of January at least! They looked a bit straggly, but nothing a quick tidy up couldn’t sort.

Having checked them over and seeing that their bright yellow root systems were ok, they were re-potted and fed.

A lot of the other plants I wanted to work on were still far to wet so I have brought them inside the man cave for tonight as we are due more rain and hopefully they will be dry enough to work on tomorrow.

Feeling better and armed with my to-do-list from yesterday, today has been a much more productive day 🙂

To be honest, just having my hands and nails covered in compost has made me feel better!

First on the list today was CAMPANULA ‘Carpatica Blue‘. These were already in their 9 cm pots, but needed tidying up and feeding. There were also a few specimens which needed to be disposed of as they had given up the will to live.

I ended up with 41 healthy looking plants which are now fed and back outside to do their thing!

Next were the VERBENA ‘bonariensis’. Some of these plants were already in their 9 cm pots, but some were in some random 10 inch ones I had to use as I ran out of the 9 cm ones at the time of transplanting.

These VERBENA had shown signs of powdery mildew and after a treatment a few weeks ago, they have recovered well although some of the stems were a bit baron on leaves so, unfortunately some of the plants needed a rather severe trim. There were also some that had literally just rotted in their pots due to the volume of rain we have had this winter.

After tidying up, re-potting and feeding, I was left with 24 healthy plants. They may look a little small, but they look nice and healthy and I am hopeful they will bounce back in time to flower in July.

Onto SHASTA DAISY ‘Alaska’. I had put these plants undercover in one of the mini-grow-houses 10 days ago to dry out and they were still soaking wet – GRRR!

I have tidied them up and they are now sat on the kitchen windowsill (!!) drying out enough for me to feed them before I place them back outside. I’m pleased to say I have 9 lovely looking plants from these 🙂

Finally onto GERANIUM ‘Derrick Cook’. These poor buggers looked awful and I genuinely thought I had lost the lot 😦

Then, on closer inspection, a number of the plants were showing signs of growth!